This invention relates to an improved drive mechanism for opening and closing a closure panel. In particular, this invention relates to a drive mechanism for a sliding mini-van door.
Conventional systems for automatically opening and closing a sliding door in a vehicle include a power drive assembly for moving the door so that the door can be moved between a fully closed position and a fully open position. Examples of such systems are described in WO 97/44559; and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,644,869; 5,536,061; 5,434,487; and 5,203,112.
In several of the examples of power sliding doors of the prior art, the drive assembly remains engaged even when the power is not activated. Thus when an operator wishes to manually open or close the door, the operator must overcome the drag produced by the drive assembly. In moving the door with the drive assembly engaged, the motor must be rotated in addition to all of the gears or other hardware of the drive assembly.
The disadvantages of the prior art may be overcome by providing a drive assembly for opening and closing a closure panel, wherein the drive assembly has a simple mechanism for engaging the drive effecting powered movement of the closure panel and disengaging the drive effecting low effort manual movement of the closure panel.
In accordance with the invention, there is provided a drive assembly for driving and manual movement of a sliding side door between open and closed positions on a vehicle body, the drive assembly having a track assembly mounted to the vehicle body and a drive mechanism mounted to the sliding side door for operatively engaging the track assembly, the drive mechanism having an input drive motor driving an output gear assembly for engaging the track assembly characterized in that the input drive motor is coupled to an input gear assembly, and a transmission gear assembly has a sliding gear which is selectively movable between an engaged position coupling the input gear assembly to the output gear assembly for driving movement of the sliding side door and a disengaged position where the output gear assembly is disengaged from the input drive motor for manual movement of the sliding side door.
The invention also provides for the transmission gear assembly to include an actuator motor, a gear train coupled to the actuator motor and engaging a lever pivotally connected for selectively moving the sliding gear between an engaged and a disengaged position.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the lever has three arms respectively coupled to the gear train, sliding gear, and a disengagement cable coupled to a latch release handle of the sliding side door so that the sliding gear is disengaged when a door latch is manually released.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the track assembly is mounted to the vehicle body at a predetermined height and the drive mechanism is mounted to the sliding side door so as to be proximate to the door latching mechanism.